


Droplets

by kirazi



Series: Fountainverse [3]
Category: Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Bonus Scenes, F/M, Originally Posted on Tumblr
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-01-13
Updated: 2020-01-13
Packaged: 2021-02-27 14:00:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,065
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22238260
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kirazi/pseuds/kirazi
Summary: A collection of assorted ficlets (bonus scenes, drabbles that got out of hand, etc) from what I guess I'm now calling the Fountainverse, originally posted on Tumblr.First one: Unarmored, a thousand words of feelings about blued steel and bedsheets (set a couple weeks after the events of Chapter 8 in A Great Fountain, but can be read as a standalone of sorts).
Relationships: Jaime Lannister/Brienne of Tarth
Series: Fountainverse [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1595203
Comments: 22
Kudos: 94





	Droplets

**Author's Note:**

> So, bethanyactually encouraged me officially make A Great Fountain and Winter Should Have Meaning a series (thanks!) and since I wasn't able to get the new chapter of Winter ready to share this weekend, I thought I'd post this instead. I'll keep adding any tumblr ficlets I write for this 'verse as they accumulate. I may also throw in some of the Winterfell prequel-ish shorts I've posted on tumblr over the past few months, unless I make them into a separate collection.
> 
> and if you don't want to wait for me to get around to putting things up here, you can find them at kiraziwrites on tumblr dot com

They’ve wrecked the bed.

“Have you got any spare bedclothes?” Jaime asks, stretching, feeling as lazy and self-satisfied as any purring lion. He’s sprawled across the rumpled covers, enjoying the warmth of the morning sunlight on his bare skin. “I think these will need replacing.”

Brienne flushes, a delightful spectacle. “I’ll take care of it,” she says, pulling her shirt over her head. “Later—it’s almost time for the morning muster.”

“Let me,” he insists. “I’m perfectly capable of making a bed,” he adds, picking his wooden hand out the pile of discarded garments on the floor and waggling it in her direction.

She sighs, and gives way. “In there,” she says, pointing to the wooden chest at the foot of the bed.

“Good,” Jaime says. “I’ll fetch us some breakfast, too, if you won’t be long,” he offers. It’s a rest-day; she still has to assemble her men and review the rota for the shifts guarding the king, but he has no duties between now and the next sunrise, and once the muster is done, neither will she, unless she chooses to make some. He’s hoping she’ll come back, instead, and help him disgrace the clean bedding.

“Oh,” Brienne says, still pink. “No, that’s—I can get something to bring up.”

“Excellent,” he tells her, grinning. “I’ve worked up _quite_ an appetite.” She shoots him a scolding look as she leaves, but she can’t keep her mouth from lifting at the corner, and that tiny, helpless smile warms him even more than the sunshine.

Jaime pulls up his breeches and straps on the false hand, and starts stripping the stained, torn sheets from the bed, leaving them in a heap in the corner. Some chambermaid will come by to collect them eventually. It’s not particularly discreet, but they’ve more-or-less given up on discretion; they’ll be married in a fortnight, and if the servants want to gossip about what they’ve been doing in the meantime, he can’t bring himself to care. Let them talk. He wants to shout it to the city walls, and beyond: she’s mine, and I’m hers; I’m _here_ , in her bed. He opens the chest and starts to dig through the layers of socks and cloaks and blankets inside.

The sheets are easily located, but as he’s pulling them out, his hand brushes against something hard, buried in the bottom of the chest. He pauses, and reaches to draw out a bulky, clanking mass wrapped in canvas, setting it onto the bed in front of him. He unfolds the cloth, suddenly breathless. It—yes, it _is_. “Blued steel,” he’d told the armorer, long ago, “with layered pauldrons, and some extra room here, in the cuirass.” He’d seen the marks, in the bath at Harrenhal—the reddened abrasions where her ill-fitting, patchwork armor had ground against her skin. There’s still a faint, whitened patch just to the side of her right breast, where the edge of the plate had rubbed long and harsh enough to scar.

The steel has kept its deep color, although the metal is scored and dimpled now, gone dull in places. He runs his palm over the surface, tracing the scrapes and lines left by edged blows. There’s one particular dent that bites deep into the left shoulder—he recalls, in a sudden flash, seeing her take that hit, on the ramparts in Winterfell, fighting his desperate way back to her side. He also remembers helping her out of this armor, unfastening it piece by piece, one-handed, on several of the nights that had followed.

He’s so lost in the memory that he doesn’t hear Brienne come back in—just the sound of a jug and plate thumping onto the table, and then her indrawn breath, when she turns to see him sitting there, hand still pressed to the armor.

“You kept it,” Jaime says, quietly.

Brienne’s face is solemn. “Yes,” she says, low-voiced.

“I’d thought you might have—left it behind,” he says. “If it reminded you.”

“No,” she tells him, coming to the bedside, gazing down at the dark heap of metal. “I wore it until the new ones were made, for the whole Kingsguard. It’s not easy to find armor that fits. I wasn’t—I wouldn’t have abandoned it, just because of—sentiment. Anymore than I’d have got rid of the sword, or Podrick.”

He nods, mute. The things he wants to say are lodged in his throat; he can’t quite seem to make the words come out whole.

“It did remind me,” she says, very softly, and he hears the ache in her voice; it resonates in his chest. “But I didn’t want to forget. Not any of the things you gave me. No matter how much it hurt.”

He puts out his hand, then, and she takes it and settles down next to him on the bare woolen mattress. Jaime exhales, and shifts himself back towards the headboard, so he can wrap himself around her and pull her close, until she’s sitting between his legs, her knees tucked to her chest, leaning back against him. He tips his head back, so she can fit hers just under his chin, like a puzzle piece, and runs his fingers over her wrist, feeling her pulse hum under the skin.

“I’m sorry,” he says, for the hundredth time; the words no less inadequate than each time before. He’ll keep on saying them, even so, as long as she’ll let him repeat himself. “I’m glad you still have it,” he adds. “When I saw you again, here, and saw you were still wearing the sword, I—” he breaks off, unable to articulate the feeling. “I’m glad,” he says again.

Brienne turns up her palm, and laces her fingers through his. “I know,” she tells him, reassuring. The warm weight of her in his arms drives out the heavy feeling in his chest, and his mood lifts again, just like that.

“I do like the new armor,” he says, after a moment. “Much less gaudy than the last Lord Commander’s—that’s an improvement all round—and the color suits you, though it’s a pity it doesn’t match your eyes.”

Brienne turns them on him, then, shining bluer than any steel. “I thought you said you were going to make the bed,” she tells him, suddenly playful.

Jaime grins at her. “Yes, Ser,” he promises. “In just a moment.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> technically lions don't purr, but I think Jaime would, under the circumstances


End file.
